They say a picture speaks a thousand words, and yet even as a fan of comics and manga I’ve always placed more value in a thousand well-chosen words than a single image. But Bad Friends has taught me that, perhaps, the meaning of the phrase is that sometimes a picture, in complete silence, can say …
Literature
In 2017 the Nobel Prize for Literature was won by the illustrious Kazuo Ishiguro, and though he is a British citizen and writes exclusively in English, he is of Japanese birth and his first two books were set in the land he first called home. Ishiguro is my favourite author, and his win had me …
Translated from the Japanese by Ryan Holmberg In the wake of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan suffered change after change; reeling from its losses, struggling to deal with its shame, fighting to rebuild its economy and its strength. This was a truly dark time for a nation that had lost its occupation of …
When reaching for a piece of Japanese fiction, be it novel, manga, or anime, there’s a 50% chance that you’ll find a cat on the cover, a cat in the title, a feline protagonist, or a story chock full of cat-related shenanigans. While in the west we proudly label the dog as man’s best friend, …
John Leal, whose name is always written and spoken of in full, was detained in a North Korean gulag. Upon release – as a man transformed, he returns to his old university in the US, believing himself a kind of messiah, and begins the cult of Jejah. Phoebe, born in Seoul and raised in the …
It’s been an amazing year for fiction. Here are some of our favourite books this year written by Asian and Asian-American authors. The Court Dancer by Kyung Sook-Shin ‘Set during the dramatic final years of the Korean Empire, the new novel from Man Asian Literary Prize winner Kyung-Sook Shin features a mysterious dancer caught up in the …
When I was living in Inagi-shi, a once-upon-a-time small city now swallowed up by the swell of suburban Tokyo, I would enter the convenience store next to my apartment every morning and buy a sugar-soaked bun to walk to the station with. The convenience store woman who served me each and every morning at 8 …
Translated from the Mandarin by Darryl Sterk Living in twenty-first century Korea, the animosity levied against Japan by much of the population still holds true today, even amongst many young people. This animosity of course stems from Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. Such hostility is arguably understandable, but one article that appeared …
As a twenty-something who has, not for a moment, put learning and discovery behind him, I have spent several years now glued quite earnestly to YouTube as a means of studying things that escaped me as a child. Much like the housekeeper of The Housekeeper and the Professor, one of those things I missed out …
Dystopian fiction is arguably the most impactful, clever, and chilling kind of storytelling we have, but it has dipped in quality in recent years. That is until now, as we get a glimpse into the very near future with Yoko Tawada’s The Last Children of Tokyo or The Emissary in the US. It can take …